A magistrate released Marsh yesterday after he posted a bond of $US25,000 (&#xA3;17,700).

Officials, who have set up a morgue at the extensive site, said it could yield several hundred bodies.

"All we know for sure right now are the 80 bodies, and 13 of those have been identified," Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said.

"But they've found so many other partial skeletal remains and evidence of graves, we don't know how many more are out there."

When asked why the bodies had not been cremated, Marsh had told officials the crematorium incinerator was not working, Bankhead said.

The crematorium owners, Ray and Clara Marsh, turned the business over to their son in 1996. The couple has turned over company records to authorities and were cooperating, Walker County chief deputy Hill Morrison said.

Thomas Ware, who has been living for about six years in a nearby house he rents from the Marsh family, said he never noticed any smells or other signs that bodies were not being handled properly.

His uncle died about two years ago and was sent to Tri-State for cremation, said 30-year-old Ware.

Now he and his family are afraid the cremation never took place.

Governor Roy Barnes declared a state of emergency in Walker County, which is near the Alabama and Tennessee state lines, thus making state funding available to local authorities.